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How to Make a Korean Sentence (SVIOO)

It is easier to
identify an object than a complement in Korean because of the object marker (을/를).
There is no such thing as a complement marker, but we can attach the subject
marker to it in the case of the verb 되다 as
in “경찰이되다” (to become a police). What if we add a
second object? Will it make the pattern more complicated?

In English, we have
a direct object and an indirect object. We had tackled about the first one but
not the second one. The simplest way to say this is… it is a word that precedes
or succeeds the direct object. If that sounds confusing, let’s take a look at
the sentence below.

I-showed-the money-to him.

I-showed-him-the money.

The direct object
in the above sentences is “money”. Hence, our indirect object is “him”. They’re
just two patterns that mean the same thing. It’s just that when we choose to
put the indirect object at the end of the sentence, we need prepositions “to”
or “for” depending on the context. What happens when we re-arrange them the
Korean way?

I-(to) him-the money-showed.

Normally, we
mention the indirect object first before the direct object but it works fine
when we switch them. The verb is always at the end of the line. Let’s see what
we can discover by analyzing the translated version.

나는그에게돈을보여줬어.

We can conclude
that the indirect object in Korean is attached with “에게”
(or 한테) which acts as to/for in English. Let’s construct more
sentences and see if it’s true to all other verbs of this kind.